MBA students tackle global problems through business challenge week

A car sharing service for women and a concept for more eco-friendly air travel were the winning ideas in this year's Imperial Innovation Challenge.

Students from the Full-Time MBA programme were challenged to come up with a business proposal for a product or service around the theme of “Smart and Sustainable Mobility” and present their ideas to a panel of visiting experts, following a week of guest talks, demonstrations and workshops across Imperial.

The annual challenge is designed to test the business skills that the students have developed during their MBA, and encourage them to come up with innovative solutions to pressing societal challenges.

One such solution was WforW (Women for Women) - a proposal for a website or app that provides advice to women on how to make a safer, more sustainable commute to work. In some countries, travelling by public transport can be particularly intimidating or even dangerous for women. In India, for example, in a study by the International Centre for Research on Women 95 per cent of women surveyed said their mobility was restricted because of fear of male harassment in public places.

The winning team behind WforW

WforW is designed to help such women by offering alternatives such as a car sharing service that enables them to travel safely, form a community, save money and reduce congestion. The student team behind WforW won the award for Most Commercial Solution. The winning students were Hasan Okyar Bayraktar, Sarah Pascaru, Jared Ruddy, Andre Akira Kashiwara and Vaishnavi Rajendran.

The award for Most Innovative Solution was given to the students behind Vast, a proposal to make aeroplanes more energy efficient, save costs on fuel and make aircraft safer. One of the Vast team’s ideas was that aeroplanes could mimick the movements of birds by flying in a reverse V formation ‘flight pod’, saving fuel costs and overcoming the issues caused by frictional drag. The student team were Alexander Sear, Saajid Sahabdeen, Idan Mizrahi, Pinar Gorgulu and Alisa Anantvoranich.

The student team behind Vast

Dr Charles Donovan, Principal Teaching Fellow and lecturer on the Full-Time MBA said: “The purpose of this year’s challenge was to look at how technology can produce solutions for businesses in the sustainable mobility space. Through exposure to guest speakers and the wealth of innovation taking place across the College, students were inspired to come up with disruptive ideas in a very short space of time. The best proposals looked at how a change in business model can unlock the potential of a technology with high commercial potential.”

The students presented their business ideas to a panel of industry experts including Imperial alumnus Mark Randall, Founder of Renaissance Capital Partners Ltd (Management MBA 2004), a private company established in 2008 to invest funds in high-growth, innovative and entrepreneurial businesses and also built environment projects. Commenting on this year’s challenge he said: “I was impressed by the quality of the student’s presentations, which demonstrated a real understanding of business and sustainability. Over half of the proposals were commercially viable ideas that I could see a real place for in the sustainability market.”

The other panellists were Philip King (Management, MBA alumnus 2003), Senior Project Director at Tubelines Ltd and Jeffrey Pittaway, a research associate for the Business School.